14297/1POLICE constables John 'Geordie' Forster and Ivor Noyce are a pair to be reckoned with as far as crooks are concerned.

The detection duo who usually work night shifts together will collect a top award today.

They will receive Divisional Commandant certificates from Chief Superintendent Jerry Wickham, who formerly served at Marlborough as a sergeant.

The awards are in recognition of their determination to bring a series of thefts from lorries to a halt.

They ignored the possibility of violence to arrest three men who were in the process of stealing £100,000 of wine from a lorry parked in the Bay Bridges layby on the edge of Marlborough on the Swindon road.

It was there in the previous few months that two lorries had been raided while their drivers slept.

On the first occasion a valuable load of washing machines and tumble dryers was taken. The second theft involved tens of thousands of pounds worth of lights and fittings destined for B&Q shops.

The two constables made a point of keeping an eye on the layby whenever they were on night duty.

On June 2 this year they checked the lay by during the early part of their night shift and noticed one lorry laid up for the night with the driver in his cab with its curtains drawn.

PC Forster, 12 years with the Wiltshire force and based in Marlborough since last October, said: "We get four or five lorries staying there each night on average and we had made it part of our patrol to check on them."

Earlier in the evening they noticed the large box van parked in the layby and carried on with their patrols that take them over a wide area.

PC Noyce, 11 years with the force and six in Marlborough, was driving the section car and as they drove past the layby again at 12.40am they saw a second lorry had reversed up close to the first.

PC Noyce drove in to the layby and PC Forster jumped out of the patrol car and ran behind the lorry where he held onto and arrested two men.

Meanwhile PC Noyce went to the lorry where he found a third man still in the process of transferring cases of wine into their own lorry.

PC Forster said: "Luckily I always carry a spare pair of handcuffs when on night shifts."

They were able to shackle their three prisoners and call for extra transport to take them to the custody centre at Salisbury.

While they were holding the three men and chatting to them, the crooks revealed that they had believed the two PCs had a number of other officers backing them up.

PC Noyce said: "They told us they thought were a lot more of us waiting in the shadows. I think that if they had realised there were just the two of us then they might have tried to offer some resistance."

The three men, all from the West Bromwich area of the Midlands, subsequently appeared in court and admitted not only the Marlborough layby wine theft, but also a number of other similar offences in other parts of the country.

Two were jailed and the third received a community rehabilitation order.

PCs Forster and Noyce revealed that after they had arrested the three menthey then had to wake up the driver of the wine lorry to tell him they had saved his load from being stolen.

PC Noyce said: "He had a bit of a shock when we told him we had arrested three men who had been off-loading his wine."

Ch Supt Wickham said the Divisional Commander awards were given in recognition of officers who do more than is normally expected of them.

"In this case the two officers knew offences of this kind had been taking place at that location and they went that extra mile to catch a team of individuals who had operated across the country," he said.

Three weeks ago the same pair of officers were on on patrol together at 4am when they became suspicious of a bus on the A4 at Fyfield.

When they stopped it they found it had been stolen from Stroud, the driver had committed a burglary in Bristol and had his haul on board and that he was a 'tagged' offender.